


not quite free

by silversilky



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, major chara death is in a flashback, mortal engines au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 12:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silversilky/pseuds/silversilky
Summary: "They're coming.""They?" Tsugumi replied, startled and confused.In response, Sayo pulled back her coat and desperately tapped the green lightning-bolt insignia attached to the front of her uniform. "Weare coming," she said, and she saw the realization sink into Tsugumi's face.





	not quite free

**Author's Note:**

> i've wanted to write a mortal engines au for a long while now so here's this! hopefully even if you're only familar with bandori it'll still be a decent read. also, if you're here and only familiar with bandori, please read mortal engines! it's good i promise

**1.**

  
She'd been so sure of herself, once. Full of fire and purpose as a member of the Green Storm. No matter the cost, together they would end the reign of Municipal Darwinism and make the world green. Green like her hair. Green like her sister's eyes, staring into the bright midsummer sky as she lay dead from a townie's bullet.

  
Through the wreckage that had been their humble static town before war descended upon it, she had dragged the body to one of the Storm's foot soldiers, a Resurrected Man, and begged it on her knees to please, please bring her sister back. It had died once, after all, so who better to ask?

  
It didn't say a word. Maybe the old-tech in its throat had rusted up. Whatever the reason, she'd never know what reaction existed deep down in that long-dead mind, only the action it had taken. The Stalker retracted its finger-blades and extended its hand to her.

  
Sayo took it.

  
**2.**

  
_"How long are we going to hide, and how long will you let them make you do these things, Sayo? When will we be free?"_

  
The voice played on repeat in Sayo's mind as the sound of her footsteps on metal flooring echoed off the walls, heavy and quick. She didn't have much time now- there was a low droning in the air, easily mistaken for some issue with the predator suburb's main engines far below, but she would recognize it anywhere. Mad Dog Masuki and her bombers were on the way, deadly heralds of the Storm.

  
Her long coat, stolen to hide the unmistakeable uniform underneath, restricted her movement more than she would have liked. Momentum caused her to slam into the wall as she rounded a tight corner. She reached up to hold her shoulder as it screamed at her to stop this recklessness.

  
This alleyway was familiar, the walls had the same feeling to them as the ones outside Tsugumi's home. As she exited into the street, there were crowds beginning to form, groups of townies that didn't understand what was about to happen. They had lived on this suburb their whole lives and couldn't imagine life without it. Maybe they wouldn't have to, Sayo thought, and felt a cold creeping through her body.

  
It had been five minutes since the droning of the planes began. Stalker troops would have been deployed, might already be slashing and burning their way through the lower decks. There was no way to know.

  
Before she knew it, she had arrived. She kicked the sheet-metal door open with a loud noise, not wasting a moment. "Hazawa!" she cried out, all subtlety left outside. "We need to go!"

  
"...Sayo?" Tsugumi's eyes were wide as she ran down the steps, and Sayo walked forward to pull her close, sparing only a moment to bury her face in her lover's shoulder. "Sayo, what are you doing here? What's going on?"

  
"They're coming."

  
"They?" Tsugumi replied, startled and confused.

  
In response, Sayo pulled back her coat and desperately tapped the green lightning-bolt insignia attached to the front of her uniform. " _We_ are coming," she said, and she saw the realization sink into Tsugumi's face.

  
"Then you- you came here ahead of them? You left to save me?"

  
"I had no choice," Sayo said. Perhaps a lie, depending on your point of view, but not to Sayo. She had the choice to stay loyal and play her designated part in the attack, but that would mean risking Tsugumi's safety. At some point that had taken priority over all else. When had that happened?

  
Memories, parading through her mind like a military demonstration. A mission undercover among air-traders, a bar, a group of rogues, and among them a girl with kind eyes that cut right through her. Soft hands, soft lips. A betrayal of her oath, and then many more.

  
"Are your people here? Their ship?" The airship was what Sayo was most concerned with. Finding Tsugumi had been her first priority, and so she'd made it here stowed on a trading barge. That barge, along with all the other sensible pilots who knew the sound of a bomber when they heard one, would be miles away by now. They needed a new way out.

  
"N-no, no, they're at- they took the _Afterglow_ to Airhaven, for a meeting with some other traders. I stayed behind." Stayed behind because of Sayo, it went unsaid. They'd planned to meet the next day, before Sayo had caught word of the order to attack. "We can probably find one in the docks. I'm... I'm sure we can find something."

  
Sayo nodded, knowing they had no other choice, and the two of them set off running for the airship docks. Tsugumi led this time, taking them through a faster route than the one Sayo had haphazardly plotted in her desperation. It made sense, she knew the area better. It was her home.

  
Tsugumi was about to lose her home, Sayo realized, and her throat closed up as she watched the other girl run ahead of her.

  
Their surroundings were a blur, houses and businesses passing by them as they ran, but Sayo saw more and more groups of civilians panicking, huddling together and searching for answers as to what was going on. If Stalkers weren't in the lower decks before, they were now. She saw hastily assembled bands of soldiers pulled from barracks and woken from slumber, heading down there now... to do what? You couldn't stop the Resurrected Men, best you could do was buy time. Maybe that was enough for them.

  
Sayo's legs begged her to stop and rest, but they were nearly there. Tsugumi pulled her along as the two slipped through gaps in the crowd and made their way to a side entrance to the airship docks.

  
But as they hurried through the arched doorway, a figure inside stepped forth to block their path, silver hair blowing back in the wind.

  
**3.**

  
Only a few years after joining the Storm, it felt like she'd aged so much faster than her peers. The other young soldiers and trainees were undisciplined and foolish. Sayo had found herself even more alone than she had expected.

  
"Idiots," she muttered to herself as she watched a few of them leave to sneak out, off to a nearby bar most likely.

  
"Quite," came the response from beside her, and Sayo flicked her gaze over in surprise. She'd never spoken to this girl, only seen her from a distance during training, but she now stood leaning against the same wall with her arms firmly crossed. "They won't last a minute in combat if they are this lax in their personal lives."

  
"I agree." Sayo paused awkwardly, not sure how to introduce herself, but the other girl thankfully took over.

  
"Minato," she said, and held out her hand.

  
Sayo shook it, and responded-

  
**4.**

  
"Hikawa." Yukina's gaze cut deep, her hand on the hilt of her blade. "When did you sink so low?"

  
Not her. Anyone but her. "I..."

  
"I knew about your secret trips, about-" she gestured to Tsugumi, who took a clumsy step back- "this. But I truly thought you were strong enough to outgrow it. I believed in you, Hikawa." Her grip on the sword tightened. "Was everything you told me about your devotion to our cause a lie?"

  
"No!" Sayo said, but couldn't stop the reluctance from showing through in her voice. "I... I believed in them. Us. I believed in you, Minato, and-"

  
"More lies. Disappointing." Yukina pulled her blade free, and held it in both hands.

  
Sayo reached for a weapon of her own, but grasped only air. In her blind rush to her lover's side, she'd left all of that behind. She cursed her own stupidity, and moved forward, thinking she could at least buy time for Tsugumi to escape. For a brief instant, Sayo thought that she understood those doomed soldiers she'd seen just minutes earlier.

  
Before she could step in front of Tsugumi, however, the other girl herself beat Sayo to it. Tsugumi held out her arms and stood between Sayo and her former friend with a determined expression, even as her body visibly shook.

  
"Sayo isn't a liar. If I know anything about her, it's that she's always honest with the people she cares about."

  
"And how do you know that?" Yukina shot back, cold and prepared. "How can you trust her?"

  
"When..." Tsugumi paused. "When we first met, I started up a conversation with her. Nothing deep, just introductions. Flirting, I guess. The whole time, I knew who she was and what sort of mission she had been sent on. I was trying to get information out of her for my friends."

  
Tsugumi turned to look to Sayo, still standing between her and Yukina. "She wouldn't budge an inch, even as we both started to feel a genuine connection under it all. I could see it in her eyes, how much she wanted to be free. But she'd made promises. To the Green Storm, to her sister, and I suspect to you as well... Minato. She told me about you, you know. Her first friend."

  
Yukina wouldn't say a word, her hands holding the sword in place, motionless. Her eyes betrayed nothing at all, but there was an unknown emotion ghosting over her features.

  
Sayo took a halting breath, and the words came forth before she could think about them for even a moment. "It was an honor to fight alongside you, Yukina."

  
Even as the assault continued in earnest just outside, to Sayo, the world stood utterly still as she stared over Tsugumi's shoulder at Yukina. There was nothing more to say. They could only wait for the soldier's reaction as she stared back at them.

  
"Losing an airship... is a real hassle."

  
Yukina slowly sheathed her blade, taking a step forwards. "I had better get started on the paperwork right away."

  
As she realized what was happening, Sayo wanted so badly to cry out, to thank her or to say goodbye, but she knew there was no need. When Yukina brushed past her, she slipped a ring of keys into Sayo's pocket silently, and then before she knew it her friend was gone.

  
**5.**

  
"I got a transmission from the _Afterglow_. They're headed this way, there's a place we can meet up if we keep going south like this."

  
Sayo nodded, and Tsugumi walked closer, leaning on the ship's control panel. There was a Green Storm symbol emblazoned on the wheel. They'd need to get that replaced.

  
"We're free now, aren't we?"

  
_Not quite free,_ she wanted to say. Sayo knew from the other side of things what the life of a Green Storm traitor was like. Short, usually. They would be hunted for the rest of their lives, never allowing themselves to truly settle down, always watching over their shoulders and listening for the scrape of finger-blades extending to strike.

  
But she didn't say that. Instead, staring out through thin glass to the red-tinted horizon, Sayo held out her hand.

  
Tsugumi took it.

  
_Not quite free, but close enough._


End file.
